


Circles

by GrumpyJenn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Clocks, Connections, Cowboys, Depression, Gallifrey, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Moffat you're killing me here with all these connections, Snowmen, Timey-Wimey, cracks, no coincidences in time travel, ponds - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:06:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyJenn/pseuds/GrumpyJenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An introspective peek (with Wild Mass Guessing) at what the Doctor may be thinking at the end of <i>The Snowmen</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Circles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [savvyliterate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvyliterate/gifts), [areyoumarriedriver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoumarriedriver/gifts), [Kehwie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kehwie/gifts), [Amie33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amie33/gifts).



Circles within circles. Connected to circles within other circles.

Sometimes it seems as though the circles were concentric, targets tightening in on the Doctor and those he cared about.

And so he retired to England, circa 1890 Old Earth Date. To be alone.

Oh, not entirely. He’d promised. Promised Donna, and Amy, and his River Song. Promised them he wouldn’t stay alone. He chose Victorian England because Vastra was... restful. Not human and therefore less fragile. Jenny Flint was human, but she was... strong, resilient. And Strax wasn’t fragile at all. The Doctor couldn’t bear fragility just now, it... well.

Vastra and her wife and their friend - they could be trusted not to bother him overly often, and trusted to interfere when he was too long alone.

And there was always _her_. His Sexy Thing, his Old Girl. But even she had changed; circles again, and whorls and loops. The rotating console and the Gallifreyan words. His Old Girl seemed just that, old... tired. Or maybe she was depressed and grieving too. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure how to ask. It was too bad really; she was the only other person timey-wimey enough to understand. Except maybe Jack Harkness. But he hadn’t seen Jack in a long time, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. There were still bits of him that couldn’t bear to be near Jack. More guilt he supposed. Pile it up with the rest.

River would have understood. But she hadn’t come back from her first holiday away - she went because she had made that one-psychopath-in-the-TARDIS rule. Stupid rule. And why couldn’t she have numbered it, like he did? Much more efficient that way. She never could do anything the easy way, his River, and _oh_ , he missed the way she... but he put that away; that was a dangerous train of thought. _She_ was a dangerous train of... right, well. Best stop that right now.

_Tick tock goes the clock..._

Was Timothy Latimer a descendent of Digby’s? Watches and clocks and time again. Digby had told him that Clara was born behind the clock face of Big Ben, and that she invented fish. Were these things just Clara telling silly stories to children? Or was there some truth to them, even if not a literal truth? A metaphorical truth then... it could be. Clara was... different, special. That’s why he had given her a key, although he didn’t really know all of the why. Yes, Clara was special, in a different way than Amy or Rose or Sarah Jane. Or River. For all they shared that specific cleverness, flirtiness, they were each special in a different way. And Clara’s specialness was something different, something _new_ , for all she looked like a tiny little human.

Smaller on the outside, rather like she saw Sexy herself.

Circles, right. And globes. Planets and suns and moons and snow globes and eggs before they went into souffles. Watches and clocks and cracks in time and space. The cracks weren’t circular, although they did make rather a rough half-cir... right. But the cracks were in time and space and clocks. And cowboys. Not circular cowboys of course,  but the cowboys were there, the cowboys and the ponds.

Ponds... he missed the Ponds, all the Ponds. Amy and Rory and Melody, even Brian, though he could see Brian if he wished. He _didn’t_ wish, that fragility again, and the guilt. And it was another connection, a pond. The pond where the governess had drowned - how had Clara _known_? - was as much a part of it as _his_ Ponds. And the duck pond in Leadworth and... had there been ponds in his last adventure against the Intelligence, so long ago? Or with Reinette? No, Reinette was the cowboys, like the ones later, with Amy and Rory, and, and... so many coincidences. similarities with Reinette and Amelia, there always had been. Seven years old, scary cracks in time and space, saviours of their worlds. But no... there were no coincidences in time travel... or very few. Connections again, circles, links in a chain.

Targets painted over his hearts.

 

 


End file.
